Salon

AGAINST ART
GORAN DJORDJEVIC: COPIES 1979–1985

Curators: Branislav Dimitrijevic, Dejan Sretenovic, Jelena Vesic

Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Pariska 14
Opening of the exhibition: August 27th 2011 at 8PM

The exhibition will be open until October 23rd 2011.
Working hours of the Salon: 12PM to 8PM. Tuesdays closed.

Gallery of the Students’ Cultural Center, Kralja Milana 48
Opening of the exhibition: August 31st 2011 at 8PM

The exhibition will be open until September 24th 2011.
Working hours of the Gallery: 12PM to 6PM. Sundays closed.

Goran Djordjevic has been active in the art scene from the mid seventies as one of the protagonists of the so-called “analytic line” of Belgrade conceptualism. In 1979, he completely turns to copying projects, which he practices until 1985, when he stops producing authorial work in the field of art. Although many works from Djordjevic’s copyist body of works were exhibited in independent and group exhibitions in the country and abroad, with few exceptions, they were not attracting attention of local critics, nor were they included in the art history reviews of the time.

The reasons for non-acceptance of this body of works are numerous and should be looked for in the preservation of basic postulates of artistic practices and meaning of art. Production of copies of iconic originals of modern art, multiplication of worthless amateur paintings or painting copies of kitsch-reproductions cannot be easily explained within traditional parameters of artistic creativity connected to the ideas of originality, uniqueness, expressiveness and authorship. On the other hand, it was not possible to categorize Djordjevic’s artistic gesture in a single trend specification from the late seventies and the beginning of the eighties with which the visual criticism of the time operated (e.g. new artistic practice, painting of new conception etc). From today’s perspective, it is clear that we are dealing with a project that moved along the line of thinking that can be compared to New York Copyist Appropriation Art that appeared simultaneously, and whose main protagonists were Sherrie Levine, Mike Bidlo, Richard Prince and others. Compared to this trend, Djordjevic is authonomous in that he declared the copy “more significant that the original” and in that he understood copying as an “attitude against art” – an attitude that anarchically pushes the institution of art into absurdity, likewise including the speaking position of the “artist” himself that acts within the system of art. Djordjevic’s copyism, in an emancipatory way, expanded the category of copy beyond all previously conquered borders and added it a power to “relate a different story” from the one that the original itself relates.

The exhibition “Against Art. Goran Djordjevic: Copies 1979–1985” is a joint project of Goran Djordjevic and the curatorial team that present the works from this body of works through two different exhibition formats: reconstruction and contemporary installation. In other words, the very installation of the exhibition has been conceived as a combination of the principle of reconstruction of original installations (i.e. the arrangement of objects) and the principle of contemporary installation that implies a change of concept and meaning, creating new arrangements and new relationships. The exhibition “Against Art. Goran Djordjevic: Copies 1979–1985” is close to the logic of retrospective as a metatextual plain of “looking backwards”, analogous to retrospection that Djordjevic’s works occupy compared to the narration of art.

Besides the installation in the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the first independent exhibition of Djordjevic’s copies that took place in 1980 under conspicuous title “Against Art” in the Gallery of the SCC has been reconstructed in the same space and it functions in the entirety of the retrospective view on Djordjevic’s copyism as an exhibition-artifact and a reprise of the original installation.

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The MOCAB wishes to thank the Students’ Cultural Center for granting the exhibition space.

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Biography

Goran Djordjevic was born in 1950 in Yugoslavia.

Independent exhibitions (1980–1985):
– Against Art, Gallery of SCC, Belgrade, 1980
– The Harbingers of Apocalypse, III Boulevard 106/15, Belgrade, 1980
– The Harbingers of Apocalypse, original and copies, Museum fur (-Sub)Kultur, Berlin, 1980
– The Harbingers of Apocalypse, copies, Gallery PM, Zagreb, 1981
– The Harbingers of Apocalypse, copies, Gallery ŠKUC, Ljubljana, 1981
– Kopije/Copies, Gallery Srećna nova umetnost, SCC, Belgrade, 1981
– Kopije/Copies, Students’ Center, Osijek, 1981
– Copies, Museum fur Kultur, Hamburg, 1982
– Copies, Gallery of the Students’ Center, Zagreb, 1982
– Bilder uber Bilder, Kunstmuseum Hannover mit Sammlung Sprengel, Hannover, 1982
– “How to Copy Mondrian”, National Museum, Belgrade, 1983
– Bilder uber Bilder, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, 1984
– Copies, Gallery PM, Zagreb, 1984
– Copies, Gallery ŠKUC, Ljubljana, 1984
– Scenes of Modern Art, Gallery Srećna nova umetnost, Belgrade, 1985
– Scenes of Modern Art, Gallery ŠKUC, Ljubljana, 1985

Group exhibitions (1980–1985):
– New Artistic Practice, Gallery SCC, Belgrade 1981
– The Second International Drawing Triennale, Muzeum Architektury/Muzeum Historyczne, Wroclaw, 1981–82
– Arteder ’82, Muestra Internacional de Obra Grafica, Bilbao, 1982
– Again in April, Svetozara Markovica street 57, Belgrade, 1982
– The Ritz, WPA & Collab Projects NY, The Ritz Hotel, Washington DC, 1983
– Landscape, Salon of the MCA, Belgrade, 1984
– Artists Call, Judson Memorial Church, New York, 1984